24 ms·

Chris Hughes, a Facebook Founder, Is Working With the Government to Break It Up

202 points by tysone 7y ago

Pfhreak 7y ago
I honestly initially read the "it" in this headline to imply "the Government", figuring Facebook finally had enough and was going to try and break down its regulators.
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago
  This is a valid way to read 'it'. The title is written poorly; I've found that, in order to reduce ambiguity in referential language, 'it' should generally refer to the most recent noun(or a most recent noun with 'the' in front). Otherwise the legibility of the writing is lost, such as this title. Admittedly, there's not much way to keep this from reading awkwardly.
  - user234683 7y ago
    I've never heard of that rule. Ambiguous pronouns like this are pretty common in English. In fact, figuring out what the ambiguous pronoun refers to is the basis for the Winograd Schema, a challenge for AI especially relevant to translation tasks [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winograd_schema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winograd_schema
    - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
      It's not a rule, sorry. Let me change my language to be less authoritative.
- rynop 7y ago
  Totally read it the same way. Was let down a bit
- amaccuish 7y ago
  Yupp. Genders would help here. In languages where the gender for government and the one for company differs it would be possible to by succinct and clear. In Russian e.g., the "it" could be neuter if refering to breaking up the government, or feminine for the company. In Russian it's common to insert the word like company which has an obvious gender, so they would write: a founder of company (fem.) "Facebook", which allows you to then refer to it later using a feminine pronoun. Though if transliterated Facebook would be masculine. (его vs её, though this wouldn't work transliterated since the masculine and neuter accusative share the same pronouns) French resists this as they don't normally give words like Facebook a gender. For German it could work. Though I don't often say "the Facebook", if I considered it neuter (the ending being book -> das Buch), I would think my thought process would be obvious to the listener, and therefore you could make this succinct and clear in German too. (sie vs es) For English I'd include a noun describing what I'm refering to, so: Chris Hughes, a Facebook Founder, Is Working With the Government to Break Up the Company (though maybe slightly stilted?)
thwythwy 7y ago
The notion that a cofounder has some secret sauce that gives the government the authority and power to do something like this is a great way to drive clicks. But it ain't gonna break up facebook.
- luckydata 7y ago
  he definitely has context about how things work and help craft a better proposal.
  - lwb 7y ago
    He left in 2007 ... the company has changed a lot since then.
- maximente 7y ago
  not on its own, but it could help move along anti-trust or whatever litigation: recall that an intel VP was brought in to testify against microsoft in that ordeal, so imagine what effects an insider with (presumably) evidence and an agenda could have.
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    Seems to me it weakens any agrument as Hughes is not a neutral objective opinion. Certainly the DoJ can make a solid case sans some outlier.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    Well, also recall that nothing happened to M$. There was no breakup because the courts laughed the government out of the room. In the end, they ended up having to negotiate with M$, and there was an agreement to allow other browsers on M$ operating systems. Basically it was laughable. But the law is the law. And that would be why we need to change the law. Going after digital companies using laws set up to regulate non-digital companies, is just the height of foolishness. You would think the M$ experience would have taught people? But I guess not.
opportune 7y ago
When I read about these things I always suspect there are some hidden personal motivations behind the scenes that go beyond an altruistic duty to society. Probably some personal vendetta against Zuck or desire to have your legacy disassociated from helping create Facebook. Not that it makes the publicly stated motivatins or arguments invalid
- ben7799 7y ago
  What's interesting here I think is how often these other founders of FB or companies FB gobbled up react when they get in contact with Mark Zuckerberg.. It seems like an awful lot of people he was deeply involved with have turned against him and FB.
tedmcdo 7y ago
If I remember correctly, this is the same guy that wanted to get involved in politics. Great way to get some recognition, while accomplishing very little. I'm sure he also diversified his stock before his campaign.
mholt 7y ago
Huh. Wow. I remember being at a presentation Chris gave in Dubuque Iowa of all places back in 2007 or 2008 as he explained how the Obama campaign was using Facebook. It was one of the first high profile campaigns to do so. I thought it was brilliant back then for a presidential candidate to utilize social media... What an amazing idea! But now I hate everything. (Was it always this bad and we just didn't see it before?)
- luckydata 7y ago
  everything is ripe for abuse, the problem is we don't have a regulatory framework or the tools to reign in the abuse on Facebook and other digital media. The question you need to ask yourself is "what kind of society do I want to live in" then you can answer what you want to be possible and not.
- schmichael 7y ago
  Campaigns effectively have no choice but to try to use Facebook better than their rivals, so it's something to be celebrated in isolation from the problems of the underlying platform. Facebook was still 4 years from IPOing in 2008, so it was definitely a different time. The vast capital Zuckerberg personally has at his disposal thanks to owning the majority of voting shares is unprecedented. Zuckerberg can have Facebook easily buy any up and coming social networks at prices the startups can't refuse (eg Instagram). This behavior is good for Zuckerberg, good for Facebook, good for venture capitalists, and even good for the securities markets at large. This behavior is not good for consumers or competition which is exactly the point of antitrust actions.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- ndarwincorn 7y ago
  > Was it always this bad and we just didn't see it before? I definitely remember reading some pretty-accurate-in-hindsight scare pieces about Facebook's only way to monetize around the time they IPO'd. That said, it's almost impossible to separate signal from noise with the earliest folks to cry wolf, and it doesn't help that some of them (looking at you, Peter Schiff) love to trot out their sky-was-falling predictions after the fact as proof of their clairvoyance. While they all nailed it with Facebook, I don't remember a single piece about Google's similarities as they were rolling out Gmail/GChat/GDocs/GDrive for "free".
thinkcomp 7y ago
My thoughts on Chris and his big idea, below. At least he's giving them names. But how many lies and utopian promises did he spin to the press during his time there? http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20190509/my-response-to-chris-hughes/ http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20190509/my-response-t...
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  I agree, more or less, with your outlook on Facebook. My only complaint is that I really wish that we could manage to mention "fraud" without going for the easy political jab at whoever happens to be President. It feels like a cheap way to gain pathos / pseudo-pathos appeal, and I don't like it.
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  you sound bitter and jealous. Maybe because the "Harvard housing lottery winner, destroyer of magazines, failed investor, self-appointed philosopher, and Rich Man Who Can't Code" gets press and you don't? I stopped reading after your intro
leroy_masochist 7y ago
This all seems like an elaborate effort by Hughes to get back into the good graces of the blue-check-mark crowd after they soured on him for what he did to The New Republic.
- thundergolfer 7y ago
  Who are the “blue-check-mark crowd”?
  - civilian 7y ago
    Twitter users with blue check marks. The way the commenter used it probably is meant to imply "the corporate media journalists"
bpchaps 7y ago
Mods: it's "Hughes", not "Hughers".
- dang 7y ago
  Fixed now. Thanks!
facethrowaway 7y ago
Bravo to Chris. We need to see more of this. Of all the FB lottery winners, the one who should be doing the most and avoids all negative press is Dustin Moskovitz. He votes his super voting shares whatever way Mark Zuckberberg wants, keeping Zuck’s power unchecked. The world needs to stop allowing him to pretend to be an accidentally successful founder of Asana and force him to own up to his responsibilities.
choppaface 7y ago
After Chris Hughes destroyed The New Republic [1][2], it would be hard to believe he has no strong financial interest in taking apart Facebook. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8705410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8705410 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8743425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8743425
- opsiprogram 7y ago
  What is the financial interest he has in breaking facebook? How's it related to his failure at The New Republic?
  - lwb 7y ago
    Some of Facebook's primary competitors are traditional news media outlets. Chris Hughes still owns Facebook stock (I think). If Hughes can take down a newspaper, that's one less competitor for Facebook, and his stock goes up. http://whoownsfacebook.com/#Hughes http://whoownsfacebook.com/#Hughes
mactyler 7y ago
Using hot button social issues for personal gain, what a guy!
redthrowaway 7y ago
Chris Hughes sure has turned being randomly assigned as Zuck's room mate into a lucrative career.
- __jal 7y ago
  As if Zuck wasn't a right-place-right-time lottery winner.
choppaface 7y ago
Disclosure: I did not make it past the NYT paywall to read the article. But, dumb idea: break off Facebook News Feed or otherwise regulate what Facebook pays to content publishers such that Facebook pays more than it does today. Then Chris Hughes earns a return on any media equity he owns... even if the regulation doesn't work in the long run. And if this doesn't work, he might get to whitewash his New Republic failings through uniting anti-Facebook sentiment among publishers.
3xblah 7y ago
Perhaps the big difference between building these DOJ antitrust cases and the ones against IBM and later Microsoft is that today more members of the public can see how a company like Facebook can be harmful in conducting its "business". There are many more people using computers and computer networks today and these companies play a more visible and arguably more significant role in more people's lives. It is plausible that more people are likely to care, even those with no stake in the industry or the litigation.
WC3w6pXxgGd 7y ago
Since when is government good at anything? It's simple: if you don't like Facebook, don't use it's products. It's not the proper role of government to interfere in private business.
- asveikau 7y ago
  Since when is the government good at anything, says somebody using government created computer network.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  You seem to imagine that peoples' concerns about Facebook are in the context of a bilateral relationship. I'm not a customer of Facebook. The customers of Facebook do not feel any obligation towards me, and I would like the government to force them to operate under more constraints.
- organsnyder 7y ago
  Government breaking up AT&T had pretty good outcomes, IMHO.
  - bryan_w 7y ago
    Really? You think AT&T and Verizon are the pinnacle of good corporate behavior?
    - firethief 7y ago
      In the ensuing 35+ years, a new anticompetitive situation has developed around different technology and different shared resources. Should we judge the solution to a problem by whether more problems of the same class arise independently for future generations?
iamleppert 7y ago
You’ll notice he now apparently has the luxury of becoming all moral and do-good after he already made his millions erecting Facebook. In the best case he is truly disturbed in what he did and the other, more likely case is he is desperately trying to stay relevant, get attention for himself and stay on the cusp of “I’m doing good for the world” It’s just too perfect a narrative to think this guy is anything other than a phony.
- prewett 7y ago
  It couldn't possibly be because he changed his mind over the course of 15 years? I don't think we get to judge his motives based on one NYTimes article and a cynical worldview.
civilian 7y ago
> Chris Hughes, a Facebook Founder, Is Working With the Government to Break It Up I was really hoping "it" meant "the government".
mastazi 7y ago
The double standard that most of the press shows with regards to Facebook and Google is inexplicable to me. My personal (probably biased) perception is that Google is far more of a monopoly, yet the press seems to be mostly OK with it (I mostly tend to read US-based news sites when it comes to this topic). I am not based in the USA so maybe there is something that I'm missing, could anyone explain? Is it because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal? Or is it because Facebook and Google are perceived as having different political affiliations? Edit: not only the press, but also organisations like e.g. the Mozilla Foundation (where is the official Google Container that people have been asking for)?
- dinofacedude 7y ago
  Its mostly the sheer influence that FB has. Google has a ton of sway itself, but outside of Youtube, most people mostly spend their time on the internet with Facebook. As seen with Cambridge Analytica, a lot of info on people's beliefs and party affiliations is known by facebook, so FB can actually influence a persons votes. Google has that power as well, but to a much lesser extent.
  - mastazi 7y ago
    > outside of Youtube, most people mostly spend their time on the internet with Facebook I suppose this (the fact that people are using Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp more than the various Google products) is atypical in my "personal bubble" (my family, close friends etc.), so that's probably where my perception is skewed.
  - cm2187 7y ago
    You are ignoring google news, where they effectively run their own editing by selecting the articles at the top, and also what comes back as the first page of result when you type “joe biden thinks” for instance. I’d say they have at least the same political influence. Particularly given that never mind what their reported engagement numbers say, I only know people who stopped using facebook around me. I just don’t believe their numbers.
    - 7y ago
newscracker 7y ago
Chris Hughes left Facebook in 2007, but I think his inputs could possibly be valuable. While a lot has changed on the product front in 12 years, the most important question is whether the thinking at the top has changed much in this period. Have Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg demonstrated that their thinking on many matters, including privacy, has changed drastically? I would argue that it hasn't changed much. It's in the thinking patterns, the decision making patterns (what they would trade off for what) and general strategies where Chris Hughes could possibly provide deeper insight. That in turn would help connect some dots (or where to look for dots) and also find patterns where none seem to exist with raw data available right now. Such repeated patterns would be quite useful and forceful in building a case that these people and the company cannot be trusted to be a good steward by themselves and that external actions are required. It would be great if they could somehow get the WhatsApp and Instagram founders to provide more information, though I'd presume that these would be prohibited, to some extent, by their contracts and exit agreements.
anticensor 7y ago
Facebook cannot be broken up. It needs to be torn down (with a few weeks of notice so users can download their own data).
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  At this point, arrangements for them to retrieve content from the myriad parties it's already been "shared" with should suffice.

202 points by tysone 7y ago

I honestly initially read the "it" in this headline to imply "the Government", figuring Facebook finally had enough and was going to try and break down its regulators.

SolaceQuantum 7y ago
This is a valid way to read 'it'. The title is written poorly; I've found that, in order to reduce ambiguity in referential language, 'it' should generally refer to the most recent noun(or a most recent noun with 'the' in front). Otherwise the legibility of the writing is lost, such as this title. Admittedly, there's not much way to keep this from reading awkwardly.
- user234683 7y ago
  I've never heard of that rule. Ambiguous pronouns like this are pretty common in English. In fact, figuring out what the ambiguous pronoun refers to is the basis for the Winograd Schema, a challenge for AI especially relevant to translation tasks [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winograd_schema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winograd_schema
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
    It's not a rule, sorry. Let me change my language to be less authoritative.
rynop 7y ago
Totally read it the same way. Was let down a bit
amaccuish 7y ago
Yupp. Genders would help here. In languages where the gender for government and the one for company differs it would be possible to by succinct and clear. In Russian e.g., the "it" could be neuter if refering to breaking up the government, or feminine for the company. In Russian it's common to insert the word like company which has an obvious gender, so they would write: a founder of company (fem.) "Facebook", which allows you to then refer to it later using a feminine pronoun. Though if transliterated Facebook would be masculine. (его vs её, though this wouldn't work transliterated since the masculine and neuter accusative share the same pronouns) French resists this as they don't normally give words like Facebook a gender. For German it could work. Though I don't often say "the Facebook", if I considered it neuter (the ending being book -> das Buch), I would think my thought process would be obvious to the listener, and therefore you could make this succinct and clear in German too. (sie vs es) For English I'd include a noun describing what I'm refering to, so: Chris Hughes, a Facebook Founder, Is Working With the Government to Break Up the Company (though maybe slightly stilted?)

thwythwy 7y ago

The notion that a cofounder has some secret sauce that gives the government the authority and power to do something like this is a great way to drive clicks. But it ain't gonna break up facebook.

luckydata 7y ago
he definitely has context about how things work and help craft a better proposal.
- lwb 7y ago
  He left in 2007 ... the company has changed a lot since then.
maximente 7y ago
not on its own, but it could help move along anti-trust or whatever litigation: recall that an intel VP was brought in to testify against microsoft in that ordeal, so imagine what effects an insider with (presumably) evidence and an agenda could have.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  Seems to me it weakens any agrument as Hughes is not a neutral objective opinion. Certainly the DoJ can make a solid case sans some outlier.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Well, also recall that nothing happened to M$. There was no breakup because the courts laughed the government out of the room. In the end, they ended up having to negotiate with M$, and there was an agreement to allow other browsers on M$ operating systems. Basically it was laughable. But the law is the law. And that would be why we need to change the law. Going after digital companies using laws set up to regulate non-digital companies, is just the height of foolishness. You would think the M$ experience would have taught people? But I guess not.

opportune 7y ago

When I read about these things I always suspect there are some hidden personal motivations behind the scenes that go beyond an altruistic duty to society. Probably some personal vendetta against Zuck or desire to have your legacy disassociated from helping create Facebook. Not that it makes the publicly stated motivatins or arguments invalid

ben7799 7y ago
What's interesting here I think is how often these other founders of FB or companies FB gobbled up react when they get in contact with Mark Zuckerberg.. It seems like an awful lot of people he was deeply involved with have turned against him and FB.

tedmcdo 7y ago

If I remember correctly, this is the same guy that wanted to get involved in politics. Great way to get some recognition, while accomplishing very little. I'm sure he also diversified his stock before his campaign.

mholt 7y ago

Huh. Wow. I remember being at a presentation Chris gave in Dubuque Iowa of all places back in 2007 or 2008 as he explained how the Obama campaign was using Facebook. It was one of the first high profile campaigns to do so. I thought it was brilliant back then for a presidential candidate to utilize social media... What an amazing idea! But now I hate everything. (Was it always this bad and we just didn't see it before?)

luckydata 7y ago
everything is ripe for abuse, the problem is we don't have a regulatory framework or the tools to reign in the abuse on Facebook and other digital media. The question you need to ask yourself is "what kind of society do I want to live in" then you can answer what you want to be possible and not.
schmichael 7y ago
Campaigns effectively have no choice but to try to use Facebook better than their rivals, so it's something to be celebrated in isolation from the problems of the underlying platform. Facebook was still 4 years from IPOing in 2008, so it was definitely a different time. The vast capital Zuckerberg personally has at his disposal thanks to owning the majority of voting shares is unprecedented. Zuckerberg can have Facebook easily buy any up and coming social networks at prices the startups can't refuse (eg Instagram). This behavior is good for Zuckerberg, good for Facebook, good for venture capitalists, and even good for the securities markets at large. This behavior is not good for consumers or competition which is exactly the point of antitrust actions.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
ndarwincorn 7y ago
> Was it always this bad and we just didn't see it before? I definitely remember reading some pretty-accurate-in-hindsight scare pieces about Facebook's only way to monetize around the time they IPO'd. That said, it's almost impossible to separate signal from noise with the earliest folks to cry wolf, and it doesn't help that some of them (looking at you, Peter Schiff) love to trot out their sky-was-falling predictions after the fact as proof of their clairvoyance. While they all nailed it with Facebook, I don't remember a single piece about Google's similarities as they were rolling out Gmail/GChat/GDocs/GDrive for "free".

thinkcomp 7y ago

My thoughts on Chris and his big idea, below. At least he's giving them names. But how many lies and utopian promises did he spin to the press during his time there? http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20190509/my-response-to-chris-hughes/ http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/20190509/my-response-t...

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
I agree, more or less, with your outlook on Facebook. My only complaint is that I really wish that we could manage to mention "fraud" without going for the easy political jab at whoever happens to be President. It feels like a cheap way to gain pathos / pseudo-pathos appeal, and I don't like it.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
you sound bitter and jealous. Maybe because the "Harvard housing lottery winner, destroyer of magazines, failed investor, self-appointed philosopher, and Rich Man Who Can't Code" gets press and you don't? I stopped reading after your intro

leroy_masochist 7y ago

This all seems like an elaborate effort by Hughes to get back into the good graces of the blue-check-mark crowd after they soured on him for what he did to The New Republic.

thundergolfer 7y ago
Who are the “blue-check-mark crowd”?
- civilian 7y ago
  Twitter users with blue check marks. The way the commenter used it probably is meant to imply "the corporate media journalists"

bpchaps 7y ago

Mods: it's "Hughes", not "Hughers".

dang 7y ago
Fixed now. Thanks!

facethrowaway 7y ago

Bravo to Chris. We need to see more of this. Of all the FB lottery winners, the one who should be doing the most and avoids all negative press is Dustin Moskovitz. He votes his super voting shares whatever way Mark Zuckberberg wants, keeping Zuck’s power unchecked. The world needs to stop allowing him to pretend to be an accidentally successful founder of Asana and force him to own up to his responsibilities.

choppaface 7y ago

After Chris Hughes destroyed The New Republic [1][2], it would be hard to believe he has no strong financial interest in taking apart Facebook. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8705410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8705410 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8743425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8743425

opsiprogram 7y ago
What is the financial interest he has in breaking facebook? How's it related to his failure at The New Republic?
- lwb 7y ago
  Some of Facebook's primary competitors are traditional news media outlets. Chris Hughes still owns Facebook stock (I think). If Hughes can take down a newspaper, that's one less competitor for Facebook, and his stock goes up. http://whoownsfacebook.com/#Hughes http://whoownsfacebook.com/#Hughes

mactyler 7y ago

Using hot button social issues for personal gain, what a guy!

redthrowaway 7y ago

Chris Hughes sure has turned being randomly assigned as Zuck's room mate into a lucrative career.

__jal 7y ago
As if Zuck wasn't a right-place-right-time lottery winner.

choppaface 7y ago

Disclosure: I did not make it past the NYT paywall to read the article. But, dumb idea: break off Facebook News Feed or otherwise regulate what Facebook pays to content publishers such that Facebook pays more than it does today. Then Chris Hughes earns a return on any media equity he owns... even if the regulation doesn't work in the long run. And if this doesn't work, he might get to whitewash his New Republic failings through uniting anti-Facebook sentiment among publishers.

3xblah 7y ago

Perhaps the big difference between building these DOJ antitrust cases and the ones against IBM and later Microsoft is that today more members of the public can see how a company like Facebook can be harmful in conducting its "business". There are many more people using computers and computer networks today and these companies play a more visible and arguably more significant role in more people's lives. It is plausible that more people are likely to care, even those with no stake in the industry or the litigation.

WC3w6pXxgGd 7y ago

Since when is government good at anything? It's simple: if you don't like Facebook, don't use it's products. It's not the proper role of government to interfere in private business.

asveikau 7y ago
Since when is the government good at anything, says somebody using government created computer network.
perl4ever 7y ago
You seem to imagine that peoples' concerns about Facebook are in the context of a bilateral relationship. I'm not a customer of Facebook. The customers of Facebook do not feel any obligation towards me, and I would like the government to force them to operate under more constraints.
organsnyder 7y ago
Government breaking up AT&T had pretty good outcomes, IMHO.
- bryan_w 7y ago
  Really? You think AT&T and Verizon are the pinnacle of good corporate behavior?
  - firethief 7y ago
    In the ensuing 35+ years, a new anticompetitive situation has developed around different technology and different shared resources. Should we judge the solution to a problem by whether more problems of the same class arise independently for future generations?

iamleppert 7y ago

You’ll notice he now apparently has the luxury of becoming all moral and do-good after he already made his millions erecting Facebook. In the best case he is truly disturbed in what he did and the other, more likely case is he is desperately trying to stay relevant, get attention for himself and stay on the cusp of “I’m doing good for the world” It’s just too perfect a narrative to think this guy is anything other than a phony.

prewett 7y ago
It couldn't possibly be because he changed his mind over the course of 15 years? I don't think we get to judge his motives based on one NYTimes article and a cynical worldview.

civilian 7y ago

> Chris Hughes, a Facebook Founder, Is Working With the Government to Break It Up I was really hoping "it" meant "the government".

mastazi 7y ago

The double standard that most of the press shows with regards to Facebook and Google is inexplicable to me. My personal (probably biased) perception is that Google is far more of a monopoly, yet the press seems to be mostly OK with it (I mostly tend to read US-based news sites when it comes to this topic). I am not based in the USA so maybe there is something that I'm missing, could anyone explain? Is it because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal? Or is it because Facebook and Google are perceived as having different political affiliations? Edit: not only the press, but also organisations like e.g. the Mozilla Foundation (where is the official Google Container that people have been asking for)?

dinofacedude 7y ago
Its mostly the sheer influence that FB has. Google has a ton of sway itself, but outside of Youtube, most people mostly spend their time on the internet with Facebook. As seen with Cambridge Analytica, a lot of info on people's beliefs and party affiliations is known by facebook, so FB can actually influence a persons votes. Google has that power as well, but to a much lesser extent.
- mastazi 7y ago
  > outside of Youtube, most people mostly spend their time on the internet with Facebook I suppose this (the fact that people are using Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp more than the various Google products) is atypical in my "personal bubble" (my family, close friends etc.), so that's probably where my perception is skewed.
- cm2187 7y ago
  You are ignoring google news, where they effectively run their own editing by selecting the articles at the top, and also what comes back as the first page of result when you type “joe biden thinks” for instance. I’d say they have at least the same political influence. Particularly given that never mind what their reported engagement numbers say, I only know people who stopped using facebook around me. I just don’t believe their numbers.
  - 7y ago

newscracker 7y ago

Chris Hughes left Facebook in 2007, but I think his inputs could possibly be valuable. While a lot has changed on the product front in 12 years, the most important question is whether the thinking at the top has changed much in this period. Have Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg demonstrated that their thinking on many matters, including privacy, has changed drastically? I would argue that it hasn't changed much. It's in the thinking patterns, the decision making patterns (what they would trade off for what) and general strategies where Chris Hughes could possibly provide deeper insight. That in turn would help connect some dots (or where to look for dots) and also find patterns where none seem to exist with raw data available right now. Such repeated patterns would be quite useful and forceful in building a case that these people and the company cannot be trusted to be a good steward by themselves and that external actions are required. It would be great if they could somehow get the WhatsApp and Instagram founders to provide more information, though I'd presume that these would be prohibited, to some extent, by their contracts and exit agreements.

anticensor 7y ago

Facebook cannot be broken up. It needs to be torn down (with a few weeks of notice so users can download their own data).

dredmorbius 7y ago
At this point, arrangements for them to retrieve content from the myriad parties it's already been "shared" with should suffice.